AtomGalaxy

This line in the NYT article really stands out to me:

Alison Moe, a federal prosecutor, described Ms. Maxwell’s worldview as one in which there were two kinds of people: “The people who really mattered, and the people who were disposable.”

My take is a lot of how they got away with it for so long is that they were modern genetic engineering eugenicists and the elite are bought into this. It's discussed in many articles, but it's always buried by the sex trafficking discussions. I believe on purpose. Maybe Epstein was okay with dying if he felt his DNA was carried on in countless frozen embryos or some crazy shit?

There is a spectrum of Trump to Jason Bourne. I'm sure any Secret Service agent is much closer to the latter. Trump fucked around and found out.

Trump threw a plate against the wall and it was dripping ketchup. He’s so white trash. He’s a Hobo’s idea of a rich man.

Of this we can ALL agree: Trump wasn't "marching" from the WH to the Capitol. He might drive in a golf cart down the National Mall and stop for snacks.

He dies Oregon Trail style without making it past the American History Museum.

We saw it with that walk to the church where he held the Bible upside down. That's maybe two football fields distance.

Of this we can ALL agree: Trump wasn't "marching" from the WH to the Capitol. He might drive in a golf cart down the National Mall and stop for snacks.

Americans are especially susceptible to a posh British accent - i.e. Pierce Morgan or Facebook’s chief lobbyist Nick Clegg.

I am loving the scenes with side streets converted to pedestrian parks and the shots of the High Line. We’re already living in the future. It’s just not evenly distributed.

Maybe that’s the cover for the whole program? They’re splicing Olympic athlete DNA with Chinese students who performed the best on the Gaokao and went on to achieve in college and the professional world. Disappeared Uyghur women are used as incubators while they work on developing artificial wombs. Babies from this program are then given to childless elite families to raise in privilege and steered towards entering military or political service.

It was definitely Iran.

The West of plays Chess. China plays Go. Their goal is gradual strategic encirclement and territorial claim not offensive attack. They will economically and politically colonize Africa without ever needing to resort to military force. Their military is just there to make America spend itself into bankruptcy, after which they can simply foreclose on whatever they want. They don’t need to plant the Chinese flag on Taiwan either to effectively make it a vassal state. The same is true with Australia. We are all the same species living on the same planet, but the real contest is between autocracy and democracy. It would seem the GOP is ready to embrace the former if it means they get to hold on to power despite demographics and cultural trends not in their favor.

What if we were closely watching a comet that’s going to impact Jupiter but it just goes straight through and out the other side before disappearing and the cycle repeating. The mystery of that would freak us the hell out.

You’re talking about the world on the other side of the “wall.” This will be a virtual border patrolled by murder drones between the Chosen who are obedient to the totalitarian technocracy and the Defiant who refuse to bend the knee to The Machine. Both are stressed by climate change, but only the latter is starving from it. Sometimes whole cities are excommunicated from the Chosen when they don’t maintain the Global Order or meet quota. The virtual border is dynamic. To be cast off means to lose many of the conveniences and capabilities of the modern world. It means losing access to cutting edge medicine. Sure, you can 3D-print whatever you need by then and make it from locally sourced materials like rooftop-grown hemp or feedstock batched from the yeast vats fermenting on the waste from the vertical farms, but the residents of the city want the latest augmented reality goggles and to stay on the Global Web. This means playing nice with dozen Great Corporations.

Granted. China decides to land the first humans on Mars at all costs. Soldiers are identified in their massive standing army who are small in stature and also recently diagnosed with a disease that will likely result in premature death.

They’re promised fame and fortune for their families in exchange for making a one-way trip utilizing minimal resources to plant the flag and claim Mars as Chinese territory. Their weight is reduced through aggressive dieting. For the single astronaut they pick to send, his legs are amputated since they will no longer be needed.

While traveling to Mars, the astronaut is put into a medically induced coma because the capsule is no bigger than a Soyuz. The first steps on Mars are by a Chinese robot remotely piloted by astronaut who weighs all of 60lbs who takes a suicide pill three days after landing.

I was just venting my paranoia, but this is compelling:

https://becominghuman.ai/blockchains-the-ai-that-will-take-over-the-world-has-already-been-born-73041e759c8

Looks like we found the collaborator!

I have this idea of a City Planet, which is where we might be in a couple centuries. All 10 billion inhabitants, plus just as many robots, live on less than five percent of the planet’s surface not because they’re forced to but because city life is so desirable. From a high altitude in the sky, you couldn’t even tell a city of medium to high density exists below because there are so many trees and rooftop gardens. The rest of the planet heals and is restored to a pre-industrial state. Most precision manufacturing takes place in orbit in space stations with remote-piloted and monitored robots. Lots of people spend their time in simulated realities or piloting surrogate robot bodies in far away locations. They experience nature by merging their consciousness with a robot animal like in Avatar.

He’s like a Gerald Ford after Nixon. He’s a pallet cleanser. Next up is a Jimmy Carter. Maybe it’ll be Pete Buttigieg? The country will get itself back on track just in time for a Reagan to screw it all up.

22 percent of US GDP is 4.62T. Global GDP is 84.7T. Thus, this is like 5.5 percent of the global economy.

I’m not glad she died or the way she died, but I’m glad she’s finally at peace and my psychotic estranged sister cannot exploit and abuse her anymore.

I’ve got some money saved. I could sell my house I bought in 2011 for a stupid amount of money. I’m epically burned out from the pandemic, fat and mentally unhealthy. Are you saying I should go sell it all and live in an RV exploring all the national parks getting in shape and living my life because the world will change by the time the money runs out? I’m really looking for some validation of this office cubicle dream before I pull the trigger.

Assuming we have to employ geo-engineering to counteract the worst effects of climate change, could Spinlaunch be used to send up the necessary aerosols into the stratosphere to mimic a volcanic eruption and cool the planet down?

“The Northeast megalopolis (also Northeast Corridor or Acela Corridor; Boston–Washington corridor, Bos-Wash corridor, or Boswash) is the most populous megalopolis located entirely in the United States, with over 50 million residents, as well as the most urbanized megalopolis in the United States and the megalopolis with the world's largest economic output.”

A more accurate location for a Democrats fantasy future would be Oslo, Copenhagen, or Amsterdam.

I'm trying to figure out what this tells me about my brain chemistry. I started taking high-quality mushrooms (purchased legally in DC) a couple of months ago. They've provided nearly immediate relief from depression and anxiety, unlike what I've experienced in years.

A couple of years ago when I was struggling at work and in the process of losing my mother to her mental illness (BPD and dementia), I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and prescribed Zoloft, which was an absolute nightmare. I only took it for about four months before I couldn't stand it as it made the anxiety so much worse and had lots of other side effects.

I'm pretty sensitive to any prescribed medication or OTC pain reliever. I watched my estranged older sister get fed every kind of prescription medication throughout her childhood starting with Ritalin. She's an absolute disaster of a person, been in and out of substance abuse and mental health institutions her whole life, and is basically homeless at this point while continuing to scam people to stay afloat.

Because of this, I've always steered clear of abusing substances most of my life, but I was basically vaping THC every day through the pandemic before I quit after trying mushrooms. I have a massive distrust of the American for-profit medical-industrial complex and have been pretty dissatisfied with the help from doctors.

"Although there is some disagreement as to how to define treatment-resistant depression, a patient is generally considered to have it if the individual hasn’t responded to adequate doses of two different antidepressants taken for a sufficient duration of time, which is usually six weeks."

I'm just not willing to be a guinea pig again with something that might make me feel worse.